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Racial Harassment - What to do about it

Saturday 11 May 2013, 1:51PM

By Employment Law Experts Limited

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Racial harassment is illegal. If it happens to you at work you may have a personal grievance claim against your employer.

Racial harassment includes language, behaviour, or visual material that is hurtful or offensive, which impacts on your work, and which expresses hostility against you, or causes contempt or ridicule because of your race, colour, ethnic origin or national origin. Examples could include someone circulating offensive jokes or cartoons, books or posters which are offensive, name calling, deliberately mispronouncing someone’s name or singling someone out for bad treatment because of their race.

If the offensive actions come from the employer, or someone in the workplace in a position of authority, you will usually have a personal grievance claim available to you straight away. If the actions come from another employee, a customer or a client, usually you will have to make a complaint to the employer and give them a chance to deal with it. If they fail to deal with the issues then you may have a personal grievance complaint available to you against the employer.

If you are being harassed it is important to keep records of what happened. Keep a note of the time and date and what happened. If you can get a copy of what was said or of any visual materials this will also be helpful.

We have had clients, who have experience racial harassment for all kinds of reasons, including being: South African, American, Maori, white, black, Jewish, Arab etc. Racial harassment is not only illegal it is unacceptable. Everyone has the right to feel safe, and to be treated with respect, at work. If you have any issues we can help.

We have also had employee clients who have had complaints made against them. Sometimes the employer has failed to conduct a fair investigation and an accused employee is not fairly treated. If you are in this situation we can help.

For employers it is essential that you have policies both to prevent harassment from happening, and to ensure that they are promptly advised of any concerns. If you are advised of any concerns it is essential that you have robust policies in place to deal fairly with those concerns. You must be fair both to the person making the complaint and to the person against whom the complaint is made.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.